


Still Has Secrets (Like All Great Ladies)

by lalunaticscribe



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Genius Loci, Lampshades abound, London lore, Magic Realism, References to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Sentient Locations, Skyfall Lodge is a character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 00:45:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1490482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalunaticscribe/pseuds/lalunaticscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“It’s a beautiful old house,” said the grand lady.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“She is,” the gamekeeper agreed. “And like all great ladies, she still has her secret ways.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>While the gamekeeper was technically wrong – Skyfall Lodge had no gender – Q smiled as the birthplace of James Bond was revealed. </i>
</p>
<p>Q is Skyfall, and Skyfall remembers all of her occupants. Even if they will kill it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Has Secrets (Like All Great Ladies)

 

 

They awoke when blood was first spilled on the stone.

While the land remained land, surrounding tenants and farmers and even the distant neighbours, away from the boundaries of the stones where the lines had been drawn, always said that the laird was blessed by the land.

...

While the land had always been awake then, it was awake then in the sense that a clam might be; rather seemingly unresponsive, common, and uncaring. It kept intruders off with a vague sense of unease, but vague senses really did not do well – except that one time blue-painted warriors took on sword-wielding soldiers naked and won anyway, so whatever degree of awake that was constituted might have been sufficient.

The land awoke, in the sense that you and I are born oblivious to anything but the mere sensory input, on a certain date of a certain time that seemed rather dim in comparison. The boundary stones, refreshed with blood from those nice MacDonalds fleeing across the moors, kept its promise to the family; the Bond family was changing allegiance anyway. A new blazon occupied their walls of stone now, solid and strong and sheltering. It was argent on a chevron sable with three benzants.

The land felt that, in many ways, both herald and motto suited its occupants. Just one of the few symbols that the land held, and what the land held, it keeps.

... 

Skyfall hissed when the boy entered it. He was a troubled, little boy, now the last of the original occupants, here. Much of the priest’s hole had succumbed to time, despite the attempts of Skyfall to tidy up. There was darkness in the heart of Skyfall Lodge; the land was not yet as old as great Edinburgh, but Skyfall hid claws anyway. Those claws were stolen, by a little boy, but they had been the boy’s as much as Skyfall was the boy’s now, and Skyfall was as much a Bond as the boy _is_.

Much as the stag outside at the gates might stand sentinel over the land from sea and sky, much like how the Bonds themselves were at their beginning and end. Skyfall Lodge was possessive, and Skyfall was not human though it was born from the blood of humans.

When the boy left, somehow Skyfall knew that, the next time, there would be no more.

 ... 

For the first and last time that a housing realtor had set foot on the Lodge’s property, Skyfall had been busy, fulfilling a sense of prophecy. A self-destruction that followed only the logic of old houses with the plumbing shut off and the electricity odd in places, of a house steeped in the blood of betrayal and war and a certain hunger. Creating a means, a ways to turn back time itself, to lure its end back; to not die as land, as other lands had been torn up. How to edge into London’s magic, the heart of London magic; to fashion an identity, a mortal form, a face.

To _set up shop_.

“Double-O Seven?... I’m your new Quartermaster.”

“Q.”

Here Skyfall Lodge, now Q, was so proud. “Double-O Seven.”

There was still no way for Q to leave the Isle, name or no name.

 ... 

“Of course it will. Put your back into it.”

“Why don’t you come down here and put your back into it?”

Q clicked his tongue, although it was perhaps unnecessary. He was a house.

“There’s a train coming.”

“Hmm. That’s worrying.”

London magic was rather finicky with anything not _from_ London. (There was a messed-up hellhole across the Atlantic Ocean, but Gotham was pretty much shushed up amongst Lancashire and Edinburgh and Glasgow and Milton Keynes, large and small lands alike.) 221B Baker Street threw a fit every rush hour; there was a Soho bookshop that was way too clean for its own good and a Knightsbridge apartment with flourishing, leafy and terrified plants. Several phoneboxes stood empty, bereft but suspiciously occupied on some instances. The Tube ended up the ways it did as the personalities of all the lands clashed; a river caught between titanic fjords and Skyfall a minor boulder skidding along on an avatar, an extension of luring _him_ back.

“Welcome to rush hour on the Tube. Not that you’d know.”

 ... 

Skyfall had been manor to a man named Campion Bond, before James Bond. In its own way, Skyfall had always found it hard to separate its heroes and villains, but it was a good house. That was the only reason Campion died of syphilis inside Skyfall, and not dead by another’s hand.

Yet, Q could not help but admire Gareth Mallory and his casual toss of ‘Then we’re all buggered. Carry on.’ Campion could have used some of that sangfroid.

 ... 

“It’s a beautiful old house,” said the grand lady.

“She is,” the gamekeeper agreed. “And like all great ladies, she still has her secret ways.”

While the gamekeeper was technically wrong – Skyfall Lodge had no gender – Q smiled as the birthplace of James Bond, 007, was revealed.

 ... 

“I always hated this place.”

 ... 

Q had barely taken a few steps out of MI6 when the Quartermaster disappeared.

Away in Scotland, across Hadrian’s Wall where the Romans and Picts had fought and bled and walled each other out, Skyfall burned, and Q with it. The blazon of the seventeenth century; the bloodied stones, the fear-stank earth of the priest’s hole, and flames nestled within burned, with it the curses of Skyfall.

It had really been that; the boy and the house. Skyfall Lodge- Q, now, Q had always known that the boy would be a survivor, would leave the land. The sky’s fall would barely touch the shadows.

 ... 

“With pleasure, M. With pleasure.”

James Bond, in the midst of walking out, paused and turned back. “Has Q been replaced? I didn’t see him this morning.”

“We haven’t appointed one. What Q?”

**Author's Note:**

> This was partially inspired by [The Offering Tree](http://archiveofourown.org/works/833892/chapters/1587146), but frankly it's different.
> 
> I did this at two in the morning, so it's not great. It's not concise. It's not meant to be smooth. Much of it is rugged and rough, like how I imagine Skyfall must feel. It's actually a very nice house in the Highlands; shame it got blown up in the end.


End file.
